


Came Before. 1/1.

by punky_96



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 11:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10661367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punky_96/pseuds/punky_96
Summary: What came before has no bearing on what is now.  Re-arrange Runway time to avoid the Paris trip.  So Andrea has finished her degree at Northwestern and is taking a year in Paris. I have no idea how or why. Maybe like Charlie, she found the Golden Ticket and there was a host family and a year to study French Literature. In any case, she comes back from Paris to grad school in Chicago and then the group heads to New York.





	Came Before. 1/1.

  
  
  
_“‘I love you’ is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.”_ –Jeanette Winterson,  Written on the Body  
  
  
  
_**Came Before. Part 1/1.**_  
  
The crisp chill of winter had begun. The brunette tugged the belt of her trench coat tighter around her waist as she continued up the lane. Jet lag and fumbling for French words were forgotten in the intensity of the first nine weeks after arrival. Now she was a girl about town—walking onto the high street to visit the grocer, the butcher, or the café. Her cell phone was in her pocket, not that she’d use it, but so she had it. Her friend Monique should be home and they could sneak down to Henri’s house to see if the guys were playing futbol.  
  
“Allo.” Jacqueline blinked at the young brunette and then smiled. “Andrea. It is you.” Monique’s older sister pulled Andrea in for a kiss on each cheek.  
  
Breathless, Andrea sort of returned the kisses and then mourned the loss of opportunity when Jacqueline pulled away to look into her eyes. She took comfort that the older girl’s arms were still around her. “Jacqueline.” She murmured as quickly as she could despite the erratic beat of her heart. She’d only met her a few times, when Jacqueline would visit on the weekends, but she had bewitched Andrea each time.  
  
“Monique is not here. I am so sorry.” Jacqueline squeezed Andrea and then reluctantly let her go. The brunette had tensed up, although the flush of her cheeks let Jacqueline know the girl was not upset—at least not an unhappy upset. She wondered if the girl understood her reaction, even as the brunette stared at her lips.  
  
“Did she say where she was going?” Andrea didn’t want the conversation with her friend’s beautiful older sister to end. It made her sad to know that she couldn’t just show up here to spend time with the alluring woman.  
  
“They went to visit our uncle in Calais. He’s just home from the hospital.” Jacqueline touched her fingertips to Andrea’s shoulder. “Would you like to come in? I’m sure I can entertain you for the afternoon.” She couldn’t help the drop in her voice or the way her eyelashes fluttered at the American. There was just something about her—those big brown eyes, the curve of her ruby pink lips, the accent even when she tried very hard not to have one, and the way she wanted to know everything. Everyone around the girl was drawn in like moths swirling around the light. She was beautiful now, yet Jacqueline knew that when she grew into her confidence she would be utterly irresistible.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Monique teased her friend about the relationship developing with her sister. Weeks later, she admitted her jealousy one rainy afternoon when Jacqueline was away for her job. Monique made Andrea promise to introduce her to her older brother when she came to America. It made Andrea laugh, which caused Monique to pout. Barely containing her mirth, Andrea promised to introduce her to her brother. She further pointed out that by the time Monique could visit she would be able to introduce her to all of her new college friends. Pouting ended after that and the daydreaming took over.  
  
Jacqueline made sure that Andrea had all of the quintessential Paris experiences—smoking in a café and savoring cappuccino, riding the metro, drinking champagne at the top of the Tour Eiffel, walking the streets of Montmartre, and looking out over the city from the top of the Sacre-Coeur.  
  
As often as she stayed with her family just outside of Paris, Jacqueline also took Andrea to her flat in the city. She tasted of coffee, smelled of parfum, and fed Andrea breakfast in bed of fresh croissants with decadent chocolate inside.  
  
In Andrea’s memory the bed they shared was made of pillows.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Winter gave way to Spring, and Jacqueline shared the reawakening of the world with her younger lover. Early morning strolls were followed by lazy afternoons making love. On other occasions late mornings gave way to a daytrip crammed into an afternoon. More than once they had to grab a last minute hotel and share the only toothbrush that the front desk had available.  
  
Andrea studied literature and read books, curled up naked in bed. Jacqueline would rumble about the characters and then drag her off to visit a place where the history rose up from the ground instead of the fabric of the story.  
  
The rains became showers, which tapered off into the brightness of the early summer.  
  
“When do you leave?” Jacqueline asked one evening as she walked Andrea back to her host family’s home.  
  
Andrea continued forward in silence. Jacqueline caught up to her and wrapped her arms around her from behind. She pulled the younger woman to a stop. “Andrea?” When the younger woman still did not answer her, Jacqueline pulled away and turned her around. Tears had filled those soulful brown orbs and Jacqueline sighed. “We knew this day had to come.” She tried to keep her voice gentle. The knife of their upcoming separation cut her just as deeply.  
  
“I don’t want to go.” Andrea murmured before the tears began.  
  
Pulling the brunette against her, Jacqueline cradled her head against her shoulder. As Andrea cried, she gently rocked them where they stood on the quiet street. “You cannot stay here anymore than I can go there.”  
  
Her words were muffled against Jacqueline’s neck, but their disagreement rang out clearly.  
  
“What can we do?” Jacqueline kissed Andrea’s hair over and over. They held tight to each other in the darkness. “We cannot live in a castle in the clouds between our lives here and there.” Andrea shook her head against Jacqueline’s shoulder, but kept her words of protest inside. “Someday I will go to this Chicago. It is on the list, n’est pas? Paris, London, Rome, New York, Chicago, Tokyo...”  
  
Andrea groaned and pulled away from her lover. “Paris is first and I am here now.” She sighed knowing that her tantrum was pointless. If Jacqueline could have her stay, then she would. The truth remained that she had to go back—her visa, her parents, and her grad school were all in her home country.  
  
“You have a new life waiting for you in Chicago at your Northwestern. It will be fresh and exciting. You will study more than French literature and change the world, just as you have told me.”  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Andrea watched from the glass of the airport knowing it was the last time she would see Jacqueline. The older woman had not said the words, but Andrea felt it all the same—just as she felt the tears welling once more from within. She supposed that was what truth was—that rock holding her stomach down from turning, heavy in its inevitability.  
  
And she was right.  
  
Charles De Gaulle spit her out on the shores of Lake Michigan, perhaps not literally, but metaphorically.  
  
Chicago was a great place to kick-start or re-start. Its romance was different, not as old perhaps, or maybe it just had more to prove. The Second City wanted to prove to itself that it was a big player on the world stage without always proving something to New York, Paris, Rome, or Tokyo.  
  
Beyond that it was like home without going home. Pizza. English. Bagels. A general opinion that when the French weren’t absolutely wonderful—they stank. (It was nonsense, but sometimes you hung on to nonsense when it meant that the femme fatale your heart still pined over was one stinky lady.) Logic like that was usually sealed with a kiss, a beer, and a root-root-root for the home team.  
  
Nate had grown up while she was gone or maybe he was just nursing his own broken heart. Lily and Doug rallied about her and reveled in her stories, but were always quicker to share their own.  
  
Grad school was about study, BBQ, baseball, music, and film. By graduation it was almost as if Paris had never happened. She was that girl from Ohio, who had gone off to Chicago. Now she and her friends dreamed of the next big thing.  
  
Like Chicago, they all had something to prove as well, and so to New York they went. Common enough goals, if you excused the fact that they each had a drastically different career in mind. Doug and Lily were looking for a boy to date, or rather they were looking for a boy for each of them, while Andy and Nate represented what the white picket fence might be all about—the happy couple making their dreams come true.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Life, like dreams, or sleeping, is funny—you don’t even know it’s going on until it is interrupted. You wake up and realize you were in a dream. You lose something and realize with its loss how close to perfection you had been. You miss being asleep now that you realize you had been in the land of nod. Then you are stuck wide-awake and pondering how to get back to somewhere you didn’t know you were. You reckon that you had to have been there because now you remember it. While the irrevocable truth sank in that you were not there any more.  
  
The kaleidoscope of life changed and suddenly you weren’t sure what image you were looking at. The only clarity came from the realization that the view had now changed. You were certain it was right here just a minute ago, nothing bad had happened, had it? Surely you’d remember falling down that large rabbit hole?  
  
*** *** ***  
  
A year changes a person whether it starts in January with a deliberate resolution, or in the cool sun of November when somehow you just knew it was the right time. It wouldn’t matter if the year took place in Paris, Chicago, or New York. The days tick by, often with no noticeable details, until one day—you missed an event, the other person was late coming home, or you didn’t see your friends for months at a time. Some years boasted more than one major event, while others seemed to be a collection of smaller ones.  
  
A year for Miranda and you can have a job anywhere. A million girls would kill for this chance.  
  
Lily, Doug, and Nate all had their own years of transformation. Perhaps it was luck, more likely it was fate. Their paths had continued complementary to each other at least for longer than Andrea’s did.  
  
One night at Lily’s art gallery, one of the guys from work flirted with Andrea. It was the last straw.  
  
Lily made an accusation.  
  
Andrea could not defend, though she had done nothing wrong.  
  
Nate only knew that their ships had passed in the night.  
  
You know the person whose calls you always take? That’s the relationship you’re in.  
  
Andrea cried into the night. What kind of relationship was that?  
  
*** *** ***  
  
The year could have started then, though it was more likely that the year started in the spring. The rooftop event left Miranda and Andrea flushed from the chill. It was a beautiful night in April between storms. In the back seat they huddled together for warmth, punch drunk on the proximity of the other.  
  
Trying to breathe properly, they looked the other in the eye.  
  
Drawn by the magnet of fate, they leaned closer until they were kissing—French kissing—in the back of the town car. Andrea basked in the shape and sensation of curves under her palm and sighed when Miranda kissed her neck just so.  
  
New York was the city that never slept, and so they turned the night into a morning.  
  
The bed was a beautiful four-poster with a modern structure and flowing material to hint at covering. Breakfast consisted of just barely sweetened French toast eaten while wrapped in silk robes of complementary colors.  
  
For a moment, Andrea felt tears well in her eyes as she was slammed back to a moment of chocolate-laced croissants eaten on a bed of pillows between two bodies wrapped in silk sheets.  
  
“Andrea?” Miranda said her name the same way as Jacqueline and it hurt. The brunette shook her head to clear the memory and dissolve the tears.  
  
“I don’t want to leave.” The words tumbled from the younger woman’s throat in the present, even as they echoed the past. She thought that the stone in her stomach from that goodbye in Paris, might just kill her now.  
  
When Miranda’s arms wrapped around her, she held very, very still; willing the world to rotate around them and leave them untouched.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
At the last event as an assistant, Andrea trailed Miranda along with Emily. Miranda’s shoulders offered a delicious distraction, but Andrea would not miss basking in Miranda’s aura of power as she worked the room for the world. Even though she knew this was not the last she would see of Miranda, things had changed and the sting of loss tingled.  
  
Emily covered most of the names, but every now and then Andrea leaned forward for one, just to see if she could make Miranda shiver with her lips brushing the lobe of her ear. Emily hit Andrea more than once during the evening. When Andrea smiled at her, the red head growled her disgust, but stopped short of stomping her foot.  
  
Looking around the room while Miranda spoke with her newest sycophant, Andrea’s brain shorted out. Memories flashed in a transparent film over her present view. Irving Ravitz smiled at his companion as they approached Miranda’s spot. In a daze, Andrea poked Emily until she looked over and swore.  
  
Andrea didn’t dare risk an encore look at the CEO’s companion. Just the thought of those seductive eyes from her memory paired with the curve of kissable lips had Andrea digging her nails into her palm.  
  
Emily muttered about how much Miranda hated their CEO, and even more so—Jacqueline Follet.  
  
The name hit Andrea like a gunshot to the heart. As the two women greeted each other with air kisses less than a foot away from her, Andrea wondered if her past would take away her present?  
  
Miranda refused to linger. Irving had made his point by bringing her with him. The silver haired beauty moved through the party like a shark looking for a tastier meal. At the command for drinks, Andrea broke orbit. Emily hissed at her and the brunette flashed her a quick salute as she turned and walked toward the bar.  
  
The blonde writer from James’ party tried to flirt at the bar. He thought he could help her out with being a writer. Andrea evaded him. He had been a catalyst of ending her relationship with Nate, and her heart was still in an uproar over seeing Jacqueline and Miranda at the same time.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
That night in the four-poster, Andrea was thankful for the structure, the coolness of the Egyptian cotton, and the smell of honeysuckle. It grounded her. Miranda matched her frantic kiss for wild caress as they clung to each other.  
  
Words remained dammed or perhaps damned. Andrea wasn’t so sure as she lay panting, yet wide-awake.  
  
Andrea wondered if it was better or worse that Miranda didn’t know what, or who, came before her.  
  
In the glow, the white haired woman of her present slipped the covers over them and slid her body against hers.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
In the morning of complementary colored robes and the modern-ness of this life, Miranda murmured. “Tell me about Jacqueline.”  
  
Shaking her head, Andrea pulled Miranda close to her. “Another time.” It was an answer of sorts, though it was far from the whole story.  
  
Her blue eyes gazed into Andrea’s and when she saw what she wanted to see, Miranda nodded. Leaning forward, she slanted her head for the kiss.  
  
Andrea opened her mouth and shifted her body so that she would be open to Miranda and the love that they shared. She felt the stone in her stomach shift. She wasn’t sure if it would go away, yet she felt the openness returning to her heart. With a smile into the kiss, she halfway considered it odd that the stomach and heart were so connected. When Miranda pulled away to breathe, the words tumbled from Andrea’s lips, “I love you.” When Miranda cupped her cheek after hearing the phrase for the first time from her younger lover, Andrea said those three words again, as if she had invented them. Finally, they were true again. Perhaps with their repeated newness, they could wash away what came before, and shine on the now as if it was all the love that had ever existed—for Paris, and then Chicago, they were naught but a dream.  
  
  
_**FIN.**_  
  
x


End file.
